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Monday, September 29, 2008

Hauppauge HD-PVR – Now with Surround Sound AC3 and AAC

If you’ve been patiently waiting for the surround sound capability on your Hauppauge HD-PVR, your day has arrived. The new driver (in public beta) was officially released today and includes AAC and AC3 surround sound audio.
The HD-PVR is a HD video recorded that uses output from your analog, component output and converts the video to a H.264, compressed recording at resolutions up to 1080i. It allows you to record HD right from any video device with a component out port. Combine it with SageTV, BeyondTV (beta) or GB-PVR and MythTV you can time-shift all of that content on your Home Theater PC.

What's included in the HD-PVR Driver Update?

SPDIF Bitstream: DD 2.0 & 5.1 Capture

The default audio stream is AC3 2.0, you have a selection option for AAC or AC3. It will default with 5.1 audio if it is available or 2.0 if not available.

You can encode DD/AC3 2.0 from SPDIF PCM & RCA analog sources

When you take h.264 and add AC3 you have a AVCHD file which is supported (Note that I haven’t tried this yet) by several video-editing apps including:

Ulead Video Studio

Ulead DVD MovieFactory

CyberLink’s PowerDirector

Sony Vegas Platinum

Vegas Pro

Pinnacle Studio 12

Nero 7 Ultra edition Enhanced

Apple Final Cut Express

Apple Final Cut Studio

Apple iMovie ‘08

The AVCHD files are natively compliant with PS3 for playback from USB-HDD or UPnP streaming

Dynamic audio/video format switching on the fly ( channel surfing / PCM to DD audio switching when going from DVD/BD menu and playing the movie )

Fixes the audio sync problem some SageTV users were experiencing on 1080i recordings on the SageTV HD100 extender.